Leaving him _varius distractum vitiis_, and weighing every scheme, with its pros and cons, and, like a panther crouching and watching before he would make his first spring, we will now bring our other characters up to the same point, and that will not take us long, for during the months we have skipped there were not many events, and Mrs.Dawson has told the readers some of them, and the rest were only detached incidents.
The most important in our opinion were: 1.

That Colonel Clifford resumed his determination to marry Julia Clifford to Walter, and pooh-poohed Fitzroy entirely, declaring him to be five feet nothing, and therefore far below the military standard.
2.

That Hope rented a cottage of Walter about three hundred yards from the mine, and not upon the land that was leased to Bartley; that there was a long detached building hard by, which Walter divided for him, and turned into an office with a large window close to the ground, and a workshop with a doorway and an aperture for a window, but no window nor door.
3.

That Hope got more and more uneasy about the L20,000, and observed to Bartley that they must be robbing _somebody_ of it without the excuse they once had.

He, for his part, would work to disgorge his share.
Bartley replied that the money would have gone to a convent if he had not saved it from so vile a fate.